Mobius Strip At Center Of Milky Way

-Submitted by David Drumm (Nal), Guest Blogger

 

Astronomers have discovered what appears to be a 600-light-year wide ribbon of supercooled material at the center of our galaxy. They used the European Space Agency’s infrared Herschel Space Observatory to get the high resolution image shown above. Ground based radio telescopes have indicated the ribbon is spinning around the galactic center as a cohesive unit.

H/T: Wired Science.

14 thoughts on “Mobius Strip At Center Of Milky Way”

  1. If the ‘ring of bright water’ detaches itself and warps to form a mobius strip, would that not appear as a taijitu when seen from above or below?

  2. The photo reminded me of this beautiful, rare 1960 song by the late Mark Dinning.

  3. I sent this story to a friend who is a theoretical physicist. She had not seen it. A couple of hours after I emailed it to her, I got this response:

    The most surprising thing to me is that the strip is so cold, at 15K! It’s extremely interesting that there is any structure this large, this cold, anywhere near the center of our own galaxy. Most of the gas and dust we look at out there is much warmer — around 200K or so. There are several layers of mystery in this object.

  4. This is way cool. It is going to give physicists and astronomers something to ponder for years to come.

    Gonna have to do a bit of research on this discovery and find out a bit more about it. Very interesting to say the least.

  5. The animated gif image isn’t very animated. Click on the Wired link to see what it’s supposed to look like. 🙁

  6. And to think I have pondered this question for year…..lol…

  7. All we have to do now is find another galaxy with a Mobius strip at the center, sew them together along the edge and we’ll have a Klein bottle at the center of the galaxy! 😉

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